


in your hands or at your throat

by coraxes



Series: dishonored shorts [10]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Haircuts, Human Outsider (Dishonored), Post-Canon, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, maybe the real intricate rituals were the ones that killed us along the way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: Someday Billie will train him to act like a human being. He blinks at her and then ducks his head, almost sheepish, so maybe she’s getting somewhere.“I could get the back,” the Outsider offers when she asks him to hold up the hand mirror.“Nah. Don’t know if I want you holding a blade to my throat,” Billie says, and he smiles a little because he knows she’s joking. She’s getting somewhere there, too.
Relationships: Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster & The Outsider
Series: dishonored shorts [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1285394
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67





	in your hands or at your throat

**Author's Note:**

> you know, sometimes you give yourself a buzzcut because all the barber shops are closed, and then you help your good buddy touch up their undercut for the same reason, and then you decide to finally write dishonored fic for the first time in months, and then the dishonored fic comes out with a bunch of weird emotions because it's dishonored.
> 
> anyway title is from "razorblade" by the strokes.

When the Outsider finally decides to tackle shaving, he returns to their hostel washroom with half a dozen tiny cuts on his face. Flecks of toilet paper are stuck to each cut to keep them from scabbing up too badly. Billie chuckles at his scowl, which only makes it worse.

“So is shaving better or worse than having a beard?” she asks as she finishes counting out their stock of coins. He’s been grouchy about his emerging facial hair since before they left Dunwall. Billie supposes if she’d looked essentially the same for three thousand years, something growing on her face would have thrown her off, too. Doesn’t make her any less inclined to make fun of him.

The Outsider flops down on one of the bottom bunks. There aren’t many people in the hostel, so while there are six beds, three stacks of two lined up against the walls, they’d gotten the room to themselves. “That remains to be seen.”

“And just think,” she says brightly, “you get to do that every few days until you die.”

“You did this to me,” says the Outsider. His voice is dry as bone; he’s not even trying to be intimidating, really. “Don’t think I’ll forget it.”

Billie smirks at him. “Better not.”

* * *

Billie doesn’t ask about the hair, even when it starts to curl over his ears. She does cut her own, though, with a comb and a razor, and sometimes she asks him to hold a mirror so she can get the back. Used to be she’d ask Anton to do that, if he was around, and if he wasn’t she’d just wing it.

The Outsider’s a good sport if Billie doesn’t interrupt him in the middle of whatever he deems interesting: leaning against a wall to stare into the distance, for instance, or locating the nearest nest of street urchins so he can tell them the best dumpsters to steal from. Anton used to try to give her instructions but the Outsider just holds the mirror and looks on in the steady way she doesn’t find unnerving anymore.

“Why did you stop letting it grow out?” the Outsider asks the second time she has him do this. Billie doesn’t actually need his help right now, she’s working on the sides, but he’s standing by and watching all the same.

She finishes a snip and then shrugs. “Kept getting in my face when I was on the ship.”

“That didn’t bother you with the Whalers.”

“Not as much wind. And I had the uniform,” she reminds him.

He goes silent again, and Billie thinks he’s done until: “Your mother used to hate it like this.”

Billie’s mother had thick, springy curls the same dark brown as their skin. When Billie was little she got lice and had to shave her whole head. She didn’t remember most of that, but she remembered a few weeks later when her hair had grown back out and her mother had said, with some disgust, that Billie looked just like her father that way.

She’d thought about cutting it all off once she left home, but then she met Deirdre, and Deirdre liked her hair. Used to help Billie braid it sometimes so they’d match.

“Thanks,” says Billie, glaring at him through the mirror over the sink.

His patchwork excuse for omniscience doesn’t throw Billie off so much anymore, but his need to share it still does. Someday she’ll train him to act like a human being. He blinks at her and then ducks his head, almost sheepish, so maybe she’s getting somewhere.

“I could get the back,” the Outsider offers when she asks him to hold up the hand mirror.

“Nah. Don’t know if I want you holding a blade to my throat,” Billie says. He smiles because he knows she’s joking. She’s getting somewhere there, too.

* * *

The Outsider gets better at shaving, but he still doesn’t do anything about his hair. It grows in thick and black with a definite wave to it. By the time they loop around the northernmost point of Gristol, he’s constantly flicking locks out of his eyes and scratching where it falls under his shirt collar.

“I’m going to find a barber,” he declares as they’re walking through Driscol. They’re on their way to an abandoned thieves’ cache the Outsider had taken note of a couple years back. With luck they’ll be able to stay in an actual hotel tonight, with their own rooms and breakfast in the morning and everything, and still have leftover funds for passage to Alba.

Still. Billie blinks. “That’s a waste of money. Just let me do it, if you won’t yourself.”

The Outsider scoffs. They round a corner leading off the main thoroughfare.

“Don’t know if I want you holding a blade to my throat,” he says, quiet and a little mocking.

She doesn’t know if he’s joking or not. “Well,” Billie says slowly. “Do you want anyone else?”

The Outsider shrugs.

They find the cache. The hotel room they get has a little balcony, and Billie stands there to smoke her pipe. 

(“Even the smoke can kill,” the Outsider had informed her, “burrow into your lungs and convince your body to eat itself alive.”

After taking a brief moment to be disturbed, Billie had remarked dying peacefully of illness would be an achievement. She’d take her chances.

The Outsider had frowned vaguely into the distance. “Well. At least don’t smoke in the same room as me.”)

She hears the Outsider come up behind her, but doesn’t turn around until he taps the balcony to get her attention. He holds up the razor and comb in one hand, mouth set.

“Okay,” says Billie. “Let me finish this.”

She makes him lean over the washbasin, take his shirt off, and drape a towel around his shoulders. If he gets hair all in his clothes he’ll be whining about it until the next time they manage to do laundry. The Outsider grabs on to the edge of the counter, knuckles white against the dark wood.

Billie starts over by one of his ears. It seems safer for both of them. At least he’s short, she thinks. Almost exactly her height, though he always insists he’s taller.

“Any interesting stories about this place?” Billie asks, keeps her voice low and even. She doesn’t have much practice trying to soothe.

“No.” He’s studying the tap but his eyes keep flicking up to her hands, flesh and void both. “What about you?”

Billie hums. “Not _here,_ here. But there was this one run, where I was going from Alba to Driscol—”

A fence Billie used to work with tried to smuggle some kind of banned chemical in a load of otherwise-legit cargo, and after hours of back-and-forth she’d tried to leave the dock. Only the guard had reported her to a local gang instead of his superiors, and she’d almost had to join to leave with her hide intact.

By the time she’s finished telling him that story she’s got most of the top and sides of his hair done. The Outsider starts in on the history of said gang while she gets the back of his neck. Measure, hold, cut: she keeps her hands quick, keeps a rhythm going. His voice shakes as he talks, but he looks more like himself when she glances at the mirror. And when Billie nudges his head forward so she can get the razor right up against his skin and finish cleaning up his hairline, he goes.

He’s quiet by the time she’s done. Billie sets the razor down on the counter with a firm clatter. “Alright?”

The Outsider runs his fingers up the back of his neck, from the towel to his hairline. “Alright.” Then he looks at his fingers, covered with little bits of hair now, and grimaces. “This is going to itch terribly until I wash up, isn’t it.”

* * *

In Arran Billie looks at herself in the mirror, grimaces, and goes back to their room to retrieve the comb and razor.

“Let me do it,” the Outsider says.

“Don’t fuck up,” she warns him.

He doesn’t. Not quite as good a job as Billie would have done herself, but not bad at all.

Until he gets to the back of her neck. The razor slips. It twinges a little but doesn’t hurt, not really, not the way Billie’s used to feeling hurt. She doesn’t realize what’s happened until she catches sight of the razor in the mirror, her blood running down red against silver, dripping off before it reaches the Outsider’s fingers.

The Outsider meets her eyes. His own are wide; he looks almost frightened.

Billie looks at him, and the blade, and she starts laughing. She doesn’t stop for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are, as always, much appreciated.
> 
> hmu on tumblr @coraxes, i'm so bored


End file.
